Conjunctions

I suppose one of the reasons Neuromancer had such a profound effect on me was because I read it at a pivotal moment in both my own, and society’s history.  At that time I had just recently fled South Africa and ‘settled’ in Amsterdam. I needed to find my way in Dutch society, and I desperately needed employment. (It is funny how, at the time, the Dutch seemed to actively discourage ‘inburgeren’.  Today I am doubly glad I persisted, but can’t help being cynical about the current myth that all will be fine as long as everybody speaks Dutch). My studies in South Africa were in Political Science and English Literature, not exactly subjects in high demand on the Dutch job market.  So partly thanks to Gibson I had re-trained as programmer and started a career in IT, soon progressing to Oracle DBA. Although a bit older than the average techno-stomping computer geek, I was convinced that computers and the Internet were about to liberate us all.  My explanation for my intellectual development at the time is that, after my early Marxist beliefs were shattered by Post-Modernist relativism (I had discovered Derrida), the Internet hype seemed to present me with something I could believe in again, or at least, a reason for hope.  And boy, did I believe!  My collection of WiRED magazines is 99.999% complete for their first decade (Do you think I should hold on to it?  Could it be worth something?)

It is now almost 20 years later, the internet revolution has died in the board rooms of Microsoft and Google and the rest of the corporate bastards. What was supposed to be an era of enlightenment and liberation in the late 90’s turned out to be an orgy of globalization and capitalism-on-steroids, with freedom of information getting lost somewhere in the midst of all the spam, corporate disinformation and media frenzy about presidential cigar fetishes. And so far, the 21st century has only brought us xenophobia, a disregard for human rights, and lies, lies, lies. The discrepancy between what we hoped for (freedom of information, decentralization of power) and what we have (more consumer products and less freedom and control) is truly depressing. Any hope I had for the redeeming qualities of Internet have long since turned sour.

Unfortunately, the same has happened to the joy I had in reading cyberpunk. As I am currently reading Alexander Besher’s RIM, I have been pondering the question what exactly my objections are to cyberpunk, and to try and distinguish between my own personal disappointments with the Internet revolution from the actual characteristics of the subgenre. I do not want to be drawn at this moment into a discussion of what exactly cyberpunk is/was, suffice it to define it here, for me, as that body of works following in the footsteps of Neuromancer, and dealing with the digitization of human thought processes.  

I specifically define cyberpunk as a body of works as I am of the opinion that cyberpunk was primarily a (pop) cultural movement, rather than a science fictional literary movement. By explicitly placing Neuromance at the beginning of the movement, I also exclude certain proto-cyberpunk works (such as John Brunner’s The Shockwave Rider).  Although these early works are rightly seen as harbingers for the coming cyberpunk movement, they are closer to traditional Hard SF, and lack those elements of style that that sets Gibson, Sterling, Stephenson etc. apart:  a harsh, almost noir narrative voice, an overload of computer jargon, exotic body manipulations, implants and prosthetics, a relentless pace, the cultural ascendancy of the Japanese Yakuza and a blurring of lines between crime syndicates and large corporations, and situating a large part of the plot in cyberspace.  To this list can be added weak characterization and fuzzy science, especially with regards to the bridge between brain activity and cyberspace, although it is probably unfair to elevate the characteristics of the cyberpunk I have read so far to be indicative of the subgenre as a whole. After all, I have not read that much cyberpunk (being slightly pissed-off with it, and there being so much else to read anyway) and perhaps the very next Sterling or Stephenson I pick up will surprise me with characters that are more complete than cardboard cutouts.

RIM unfortunately, is not the cyberpunk novel that restores my belief in the subgenre.  Whereas most cyberpunk novels only suffer from weak characterization, to RIM it was fatal. I suspect Besher included some sex scenes for his protagonist, Gobi, in order to ‘flesh’ him out a bit, but it never gets beyond the level of hetro schoolboy wish fulfillment. No other character seems more than a placeholder for the plot. The writing is awkward and cliché-ridden, and explanations are often mere meaningless verbiage. RIM furthermore lacks the anger and guts that put the punk in cyberpunk.

It would be unfair to blame Besher for the single element in the novel that irritated me the most: all those Japanese and Yakuza.  After all, in contrast to Gibson and other cyberpunkers, Besher actually seems to know Japan, and one should not fault a writer for writing about something he knows.  The Japan-fetish exhibited in most cyberpunk is so irritating because it dates the works so precisely in the 80’s, early 90’s.  The idea of a culturally and economically dominant Japan in the near future seems as dated as the Cold War has become in a post-1989 world. Few people today would expect the rigid Japanese corporate culture to be adaptable enough to spearhead the new economy, and although the Yakuza no doubt is still a force to be reckoned with, there has been a proliferation of crime syndicates since the end of Communism as a major force.  I suspect every emerging market is linked to an emerging crime ‘market’, and we should probably expect the Chinese and Indian mafia (or whatever they call themselves) to dominate in the near future.

The essence of science fiction has always been the apparent dichotomy between ‘science’, understood to be an endeavor aimed at revealing the truth, and ‘fiction’ meaning an activity that presents the untrue as if it were true.  Consequently, theoretical discussions about science fiction often attempt to determine what exactly ‘science’ could mean when coupled with ‘fiction’.  The sliding scale between Hard SF and Soft SF (?) depends to a large extent on which of these terms is given preeminence.  Personally I would emphasize the ‘fiction’ more than ‘science’, but I do expect the science in science fiction to be ‘believable’, perhaps to the same extent that everything else within the work should uphold my suspension of disbelief at least.  I am quite satisfied to merely know that Star Trek’s Heisenberg compensator works very well, especially as it is not central to any plot or theme, and indicates an awareness of actual science, thereby helping me to suspend disbelief.

I have not read any cyberpunk novels so far that have successfully explained to me how the human-machine interface works within the context of the novel’s (fictional) science.  The problem is, as I see it:  the more we learn about consciousness, the more unlikely it becomes that it will ever be digitized. If Daniel Dennett is correct that consciousness is a construct similar to vision (and I do believe he is), the mapping between brain activity and software code becomes contentious.  Neal Stephenson’s attempt in Snow Crash to base it on Sumerian meta-language should be applauded, but ultimately left me unconvinced.

The digitization of consciousness is no mere background issue in RIM – there is even explicit mention of the idea of a word processor for consciousness.  But Besher never explains how this will work. It just works. This is no mere Heisenberg compensator – the whole novel depends on it.  To further annoy me Besher bases his model of consciousness on, well, I was about to say Buddhism, but I cannot call that amalgamation of Californian New Age-y bollocks that. Besher throws the words ‘Chi’ and ‘Karma’ around as if it were scientific concepts everybody should know. I suppose Mr. Besher may legitimately imagine a future where a scientific revolution occurred leaving New Age nonsense as the valid new scientific paradigm, but before I could follow him in that, I would expect him to explain the basic model, and explain how that became dominant. And having Tantric install itself via a prayer wheel was absolutely ridiculous.

Oh RIM is not a bad book, just not good either.  It did re-enforce my opinion of cyberpunk however:  a media hype that prepared attitudes and expectations needed for the next step in globalization and corporate capitalism. For all its promise of a new and better world, cyberpunk was essentially a reactionary movement.  

Next I intend to read some works from after 1997, maybe Verner Vinge.  I am interested to see how Vinge’s idea of the Singularity relates to cyberpunk.